“Certainly, everyone who has come from Palermo, Naples, or Rome to France by sea must know it, since he has passed close to it and must have seen it.”
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

There lay the king, and all the rest supine; All, but the careful master of the swine: Forth hasted he to tend his bristly care; Well arm'd, and fenced against nocturnal air: His weighty falchion o'er his shoulder tied: His shaggy cloak a mountain goat supplied: With his broad spear the dread of dogs and men, He seeks his lodging in the rocky den.
— from The Odyssey by Homer

He hastened to “reassure” her and made her sit down facing him at the table.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If the Laurences had been what Jo called "prim and poky," she would not have got on at all, for such people always made her shy and awkward; but finding them free and easy, she was so herself, and made a good impression.
— from Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Louisa May Alcott

Now the notion of punishment, as such, cannot be united with that of becoming a partaker of happiness; for although he who inflicts the punishment may at the same time have the benevolent purpose of directing this punishment to this end, yet it must first be justified in itself as punishment, i.e., as mere harm, so that if it stopped there, and the person punished could get no glimpse of kindness hidden behind this harshness, he must yet admit that justice was done him, and that his reward was perfectly suitable to his conduct.
— from The Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant

Motecusuma, who was always of a merry disposition, though never, for an instant, forgetful of his high station, now continued in a more humorous style, as follows: "I am perfectly well aware, Malinche, what the people of Tlascalla, with whom you are so closely allied, have been telling you respecting myself.
— from The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol 1 (of 2) Written by Himself Containing a True and Full Account of the Discovery and Conquest of Mexico and New Spain. by Bernal Díaz del Castillo

I contrived so to temper my expressions as to reconcile the gratification of both feelings; and they were as much pleased with the way in which I had expressed their thoughts as (in their simplicity) they were astonished at my having so readily discovered them.
— from Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey

"With all my heart," said the tailor; and drawing his hand from under his cloak he showed five caps stuck upon the five fingers of it, and said, "there are the caps this good man asks for; and by God and upon my conscience I haven't a scrap of cloth left, and I'll let the work be examined by the inspectors of the trade."
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

"Smith'll have some sense when he can't get any more," he shouted in Hogan's ear.
— from The Cruise of the Dry Dock by T. S. (Thomas Sigismund) Stribling

There cannot be a more humble soul than a believer; it is no pride for a drowning man to catch hold of a rock.
— from Letters of Samuel Rutherford (Third Edition) by Samuel Rutherford

Positively, brother, if you go one step further in this strain, you will set me crying, and that, you know, would spoil my eyes; and then I should never get the husband which our good papa and mamma have so kindly wished me—never be established in the world.
— from The Contrast by Royall Tyler

I should at once have concluded it caused by prelusive illness, but for my remembrance of what both my uncle and myself had seen, so long before, in the thunderstorm; while John, willing enough to attribute its recurrence to that cause, found it impossible to concede that he was anything but well when crossing the moor.
— from The Flight of the Shadow by George MacDonald

In a moment he started on down the beach.
— from The Brownie Scouts at Silver Beach by Mildred A. (Mildred Augustine) Wirt

By the lord, Flask, I had no sooner said that, than he turned round his stern to me, bent over, and dragging up a lot of seaweed he had for a clout—what do you think, I saw?—why thunder alive, man, his stern was stuck full of marlinspikes, with the points out.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

In a moment, he seized the breathless and insensible Imogen, and lifted her to his car.
— from Imogen: A Pastoral Romance by William Godwin

"I like a joke as well as any man," he said, "and can make one myself if occasion serve.
— from The Duke's Motto: A Melodrama by Justin H. (Justin Huntly) McCarthy